Our Choices Make Us Who We Are

My mother was one strong woman. She decided young in life she wanted to be a nurse and at the age of sixteen she chose to attend nursing school in New Orleans Louisiana at Mercy Hospital.

I still hear her voice sometimes telling me to be consistent. I find myself telling my children the very same thing. I wonder if they are listening.

I can still see her sitting at the counter in her kitchen working the crossword puzzle late at night. Words With Friends would have been her favorite past time if it had been around and even though I win the majority of my games now – that would not have been the case playing against her.

I find myself singing her praises anytime someone mentions home health. (That happens more often as I get older.) She was a dedicated nurse for many years when we were young, working night duty – eleven pm to seven am so Daddy could be home with us at night. She arrived home just in time to get us all off to school and then slept until we returned in the afternoon. Later, when we were older, she was a home health director for over 40 years. I went on many a call with her in the middle of the night out on deserted roads I didn’t even know existed in our small community. Fear did not enter into her mental knowledge.

With three girls having their drivers license in high school, we fought over whose turn it was to have her car, but we always had to check in often in case she had an emergency. (There were no cell phones.) We were the only kids who drove around with catheters in the back seat.

She chose to follow my father, with four young children, into the unknown, when he decided to homestead in the Alaska wilderness in the late 1950’s. We’ve always said he was the adventurer, but she probably gave him a run for his money.

About Elle Knowles

Elle Knowles lives in the Florida Panhandle with her husband and off-at-college-most-of-the-time son. She has four daughters, one son, and eleven beautiful grandchildren. 'Crossing the Line' is her first novel. The sequel 'What Line' is a work in progress. Recently published is Coffee-Drunk Or Blind - a nonfiction story of homesteading in the Alaska wilderness with her parents and four siblings, told through letters by her mother and remembered accounts from the family.